Angels Can’t Contain Fenway Torrent : Red Sox End Blyleven’s Streak in 8-4, 13-5 Sweep Before Storm

The spirit of ’86 knocked the wind out of the Angels here Tuesday night, with another resurgent Boston Red Sox team dragging the Angels through the ashes of yesterday’s nightmare.

No postseason aspirations officially died here, unlike that lost October of three years’ past, but Boston’s overwhelming doubleheader sweep--the scores were 8-4 and 13-5--left these Angels a bit more than staggered.

The Angels trail the first-place Oakland Athletics by three games in the American League West 48 hours after pulling to within one.

But this time, after escorting the Red Sox to their eighth and ninth consecutive victories, the Angel pitching staff was left in a shambles. Seven pitchers were required to slog through the mud and Boston’s relentless batting order before a storm interrupted the second game after 7 1/2 innings.

Had play been allowed to resume, Angel Manager Doug Rader would have had a problem--he was out of relief pitchers--but he claimed to have a contingency plan.

“Had we gone out there again,” Rader said, “Kent Anderson would’ve been our pitcher.”

Kent Anderson plays shortstop for the Angels. He last pitched in a game in 1984, back during his days at the University of South Carolina.

“I was hoping to go out there,” Anderson said. “Have some fun. You never know, in the top of the ninth, we might have scored however many runs we needed.”

Anderson, of course, was laughing when he said it.

On this night, Anderson might have fit in with the rest of the Angels’ not-so-magnificent seven.

In a span of 12 innings’ work--eight in the first game and four in the second--Angel pitchers served up 20 runs and 27 hits. Not even Bert Blyleven and his personal 10-game winning streak could withstand the deluge. In fact, he and Willie Fraser shouldered the worst of it, letting both games spin out of control before the end of the fourth inning.

Blyleven started the first game but barely lasted three innings, giving up seven runs and seven hits as he lost for the first time since May 20.

As for Fraser, the best that can be said is that he completed the fourth inning of the second game.

Of course, take a look at what happened to the Angels during that fourth inning:

--Before Fraser: Boston led, 3-2, and had the bases loaded with one out.

--After Fraser: Boston led, 12-2, after sending 15 to the plate in the inning. Fraser pitched to 11 of them, letting seven reaching base before getting an out.

Fraser yielded six hits, walked two, threw two wild pitches and, on this evening’s theme pitch, hit both Boston’s Jody Reed and Angel catcher Bill Schroeder with the same delivery.

First, Fraser plunked Reed on the left hip. The ball then ricocheted and caught Schroeder, back from the disabled list, under his catcher’s mask, sending him sprawling in the dirt.

Schroeder stayed there long enough to bring Angel trainer Ned Bergert out of the dugout for assistance. A few groggy minutes later, Schroeder was settling into his crouch again, ready to receive more Angel pitches.

Poor guy.

By the time the night was through, all six members of the Angel bullpen had made their way to the mound.

Rich Monteleone (14-3) pitched the last five innings of the first game. Then long reliever Dan Petry, making a rare spot start, worked the first 3 1/3 innings of the second game.

Then came Fraser.

The mess he left behind required salvaging by Bob McClure (one inning), Greg Minton (two innings) and Bryan Harvey, who threw two pitches in the eighth inning before the rain came.

That’s why Rader had Anderson loosening up during the 46-minute delay.

“At that point, we were very concerned about our pitching,” Rader said. “I wasn’t going to let Harvey go out there on a slippery mound.

“That’s basically why Willie had to suck it up in that nine-run inning. He had to stay out there for the good of the pitching staff.”

Rader sighed.

“When you look at the whole day,” he continued, “it seems like a mess, as far as we’re concerned. But, really, there were two innings that beat us--the first inning of the first game and the fourth inning of the second. Those two innings are why we lost.”

Some innings, though.

The first inning of the first game resulted in a 5-0 Angel deficit. Blyleven gave up a double to the first batter he faced, Wade Boggs, and trailed, 1-0, before he recorded his first out.

After that out came a walk to Mike Greenwell, a strikeout by Nick Esasky, a double by Danny Heep and a three-run home run by Dwight Evans.

Boston led, 5-0, and the evening’s tone had been set.

“Bert just couldn’t find himself,” Rader said. “He’s been relying on his fastball a lot lately, but his fastball wasn’t really there tonight.”

As a consequence, Blyleven wound up a losing pitcher for the first time in 18 starts.

“In all reality, his problem tonight was that he’s a human being,” Rader said. “It can be excused. He’s certainly fallible.”

And so were the pitchers that followed him. For one doubleheader on a rainy night in New England, Angel pitching led the league in fallibility.

Angel Notes

Angel breakdowns weren’t confined to the pitching mound Tuesday night. Devon White took the Angels out of a potentially big inning in the first game when he led off the seventh with a routine single to center and attempted to stretch it into a double--with the Angels trailing, 8-3. With Ellis Burks doing the fielding and the throwing, White had no chance on the play. Claudell Washington and Wally Joyner immediately followed with singles, but the Angels came away with no runs in the inning. Then, when the lineups were posted for the second game, Tony Armas had replaced White in center field, begging the question of Angel Manager Doug Rader: Did he bench White because of his base-running judgment? “Not in the least,” Rader said. “I think Devo, in his own way, was trying to get something going. He just picked the wrong time to do it. Sometimes, a person with extraordinary skills will try to initiate something like that.”

Before Tuesday’s first game, the Angels announced there were reactivating catcher Bill Schroeder from the disabled list and optioning his replacement, John Orton, to triple-A Edmonton. Schroeder was sidelined for 17 days because of a sore right elbow that will probably require corrective surgery during the off-season.